Here’s a clip… well, that’s a well -known phrase in the film and Hollywood -style scene. You can take a piece from a movie or TV show and talk about it in relation to the rest of the show, the rest of the media industry, and society as a whole. You can dissect the scene or scenes picked out to analyze and talk it up regarding behavior, scenery, dress of the participants/ costumes, the setting, anything that one can use to categorize what people say and do in the world of entertainment.

The same applies to the world of professional sports.

In this case we talk about a few seconds’ clip of a conversation from NBA team owner Donald Sterling, wherein he makes an extreme racist comment regarding bringing “black” players to parties. Considering such players make up most of the National Basketball Association, Mr. Sterling really put his foot… well, feet, in it when he said that. Now his wife wants to retain her ownership of the Clippers, but she had just as much a part in supporting such behavior as Mr. Sterling, so both need to be removed from any further involvement with the NBA.

Meanwhile, what can the fans or supporters of the NBA do? We can talk with our pocketbooks for one thing! We do not have to support the spoiled brat owners and overpaid players and CEOs of the NBA. There are better things most of us can do with our money. And there are better examples we can set for our families. No one in Los Angeles has to support the Clippers; there are other things you can do with your time and money if you are so inclined. You can leave off going to the games all together for one thing. Just stop, cease and desist, terminate your financial support for the NBA.

Spend time with your spouse, your kids, your extended family. Go on a great vacation and have fun away from the talk and chat and mental trash and karmic garbage of the cities and the mass media. Imagine the vacation you could extend with the equivalent of the price of a season ticket to some boring game! You can spend time at home with your family – just hunker down in the quiet privacy of the house, with a fun family time of pizza, a movie, soda, popcorn, fun foods and drinks and gathering on the couch to bond. Forget professional sports; become a professional at having a good time with family and friends. Use the money you would spend on tickets and buy some really great food and serve a fine dinner at home to your family, friends or colleagues. Dress the table with candles, your best plates and flatware and napkins and some flowers, put on some mood music and have a party.

Or if you have wanted to take up a hobby you can use that money to try something in the arts world. Try photography; let your creative talents shine instead of watching a few guys on a wooden floor run up and down trying to put a rubber ball into a network basket for a few minutes at a time, with their loud and cruddy mouths and their bad attitudes up and down constantly on your squawk box with the blaring pixelated screen. Spend the ticket money on a nice DSLR with a great set of lenses and take off on a weekend vacation to try it out. Try your hand at painting or drawing or landscaping.

Of course you can always set the world of the celebrity and the media aside, turn everything off and go outside to do something for your community. Participate in a cleanup day; plant a garden, clean up the trash, mow a neighbor’s lawn, repair a deck or driveway. Paint your house… paint an elderly neighbor’s house. Wash the car, walk the dog of a sick friend. Take a war veteran to the movies. Treat yourself to a movie if you are a vet and know that your efforts paved the way for others in that theater to enjoy that show. Be proud of your output, no matter what you do to contribute to helping your community. Know that you are doing something for others, not supporting a group of spoiled and hyped multi -millionaires on some sweaty basketball court.

You can do more with your time and money… you just have to find out what interests you and try it out.

THEY THOUGHT….

Poor Hadiya. Poor young girl with so much potential… poor friends who huddled with her in the park just for shelter.

Mourn the reasoning for “gang turf” and “gang territory” that the news folks make so much out of in Chicago reporting these days. We certainly don’t need the mass media touting that at every turn, that “crossing gang lines” that only gives the gangs more attention and more focus. Mourn that those youth were in “the wrong place at the wrong time”.

And now on News Radio 780 WBBM we have Police Superintendent McCarthy of the CPD coming on and telling us that the young men arrested and charged with the murder of that aspiring and wonderful angelic young lady thought they were encountering members of a rival gang and so opened fire without another thought on the group, killing Hadiya. He says they thought they were seeing other gang members.

They thought. THEY THOUGHT? What in the world does he mean “THEY THOUGHT”? They thought, nothing. My five feet “they thought”.

THEY THOUGHT? IDIOTS! BULLIES! THUGS! DAMNABLE FOOLS!

Had they been thinking, well first they would not have been out there with those guns firing wildly into a group of kids just huddling in a park. Mistaken identity… some thinking they did. They thought, eh? They did no such thing, they were NOT thinking of anything but doing WHAT THEY WANTED.

That’s the way with such people, they do what they want with no consideration for others. And one of them should not even have been out on the streets, much less in possession of a firearm with which to terrorize others. And it is terrorism, folks, it is homeland terrorism, this business of gangs. They are homeland terrorists!

Some now say that the way to conquer this behavior begins with background checks. OH NO, FOLKS, not at all. It begins long before some sort of background check. It begins before someone can learn to spell “firearm” or learn what one is. If there are guns in the house, that should be part of what the parents teach the children, and it begins with being dutifully responsible for teaching that child what those instruments are for.

The way to a better society begins with everyone taking PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for their actions when they are of an age for normal, logical reasoning of right and wrong, good and bad, basic morals and actions and considerations and the principles of good citizenship. When someone is able to understand these aspects of living in a society then it is time to test what the child has learned in the way of being responsible for what he does and what he does to others, and learning how to act when someone does something to him.

When your child is of an age to understand that something will hurt someone else, or that “this is a good thing to do”, or that “you are not to use this unless it is for…”, then you start them out on the path to being a good citizen. You teach trustworthiness, accountability, honesty, respect for others, and in time, community service. That should be the goal of our education system in this nation.

They thought, hm. Well, our politicians are not doing much thinking either. They sure are doing a lot of talking and sitting around “looking into things”. But doing talking and sitting do not address the issues like ACTION does. We don’t have time for the politicians doing their thing to keep on wasting time and money and energy.

We have to act, we have to govern ourselves and our communities; we cannot wait for the elected officials to get busy on that. Government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” So we as good citizens have to do the acting and the governing. You are not in control of the gangs – that is what the gang folks want you to think. But the gangs are nothing but cowards… they are armed cowards and they are bad, unfeeling, inconsiderate people, and that makes them dangerous. They are desperate for something, be it material gain, drugs, satisfying a habit attributable to greed or materialism or to get attention they otherwise miss somehow.

Gangs do not control you or me or us, they do not control the parks, schools, “neighborhoods”, street corners and stores. The upstanding people like Hadiya and her family and her nice friends are the ones who have the real control and who pay the taxes and who want to live and play in a better place. They want to learn and to work and to be good citizens; they do not want to be like those murderous thugs and fools who want to muscle in and terrorize others.

Do not stand for such behavior any longer. Come out of the woodwork, find out who these people are and what they are doing, what they want and why they are around. Move them out by force if you have to. Turn them in, SNITCH ALREADY! You might save a life.

The more we talk, the more the situations and violence, gang rule and drug issues will continue; talk is not action in the best sense of the word. Actual effort and getting to the job and doing the work is what matters once the talk is done. Talk up a storm; the gangs and criminals will keep working right on through those storms. Legislate, get together and “look into” the situations, send people out to “take a look at” the “neighborhoods” and then “make a report on their findings”. Keep right on doing the “studies”, and all you do is just as helpful as trying to find cures for cancer when the solution is to get rid of the chemicals that cause the diseases in the first place.

You can get rid of at least some of the guns and you can be rid of stock in gun makers and any support of gun manufacturers and those who put on the shows where background checks are not necessary. That means, as many officials have observed, that anyone can go to those shows and get any sort of gun they want.

Guns do not kill people; people kill people – that is the saying. It is true. But on to the rest of the topic………

Now the main issues is about “guns”… well, there are all kinds of what we can class as “firearms”. There is the .22, there is the Bushmaster, there is the cannon one of our neighbors used to fire off every July 4 from his front lawn. He would dress in period costume and shoot that cannon off right on schedule. Guns have been around for centuries, and they have basically one use and purpose. These weapons are, as any weapons are, meant to inflict harm, injury, damage and death, quickly and with pain. Death is never “instantaneous” and video games can in this respect be misleading to those who play them.

The idea that death comes to a human being as it does on a video game screen is ridiculous. Even using the most potent drugs, death comes in seconds or minutes, and the person so in harm and inflicted will feel something before the final moments arrive and vital functions cease. In the same idea, using a weapon loaded with dozens or hundreds of rounds is not going to bring death any faster; it will just make the plight of the dying more painful and just plain awful.

So we talk about the gun, and just think of how many varieties there are. As mentioned above there is the simple hand gun many people purchase for home or business defense, the service weapon law enforcement officials carry to their jobs every day as they defend our cities and borders, and the machine guns or “assault” weapons our miliary and SWAT teams use in their daily work. The latter have those high potency magazines these personnel need to discharge their jobs as they can be in hazardous territories where their opponents are armed with such things.

Lately in these gun turn -in events and gun buy -back events, someone turned in a missile launcher and at another event a rocket launcher. I wonder why someone would even want these anywhere near them or their families or neighbors, even as collectors items. I know people who have rid their homes of all weapons, no matter their value, and they feel better for being rid of these implements of destruction.

In an episode of EMERGENCY, a real nail -biter, the paramedics and fire department respond to a man injured when a weapon malfunctions and the round ends up inside of him. Dr. Brackett has to come out and perform emergency surgery on the man in the man’s own back yard as it is too dangerous for him to be moved. The bomb squad has to be called, and the responders note that the man has enough guns in his collection to start a war. Thus the man’s negligence ends up putting many more people in danger – the responders, his wife, his neighbors and friends. Now many people do not have collections that elaborate or potent, but I do know people who have home collections of firearms. I never felt safe around those homes; if people do not know how to properly maintain their weapons they either need to learn or get rid of them. The popular television show EMERGENCY! is about forty years old now but many of the episodes are relevant to issues going on today, and they are worth watching.

The NRA claims that the proposed bans on assault weapons will ruin our Second Amendment rights, but it will do no such thing at all. The ban is on one particular class of firearm, those meant to discharge dozens of rounds a second or a minute and inflict mass serious harm in schools, crowds, malls and the like. These guns end up in the wrong hand much of the time; I can see no need for such guns as a method of recreation.

There are better ways to have recreation, or if you would rather term it, RE -CREATION. Thinking of taking leisure in the view of the latter pronunciation might give you a different view of using high – powered machine -style guns at all, specially for hunting or for some other purpose of causing harm or pain on a living thing.

There is also the issue of mental illness and debating how it should be judged on that basis who should or should not have guns. Who has the right to judge in the first place, considering that everyone is to some degree mentally unstable. No one is what could be called “normal”, and at any rate who can judge or say what “normal” is. Everyone is so different, “diverse”, and individual that nothing is “normal”. There are those who are educated to discern “mental illness” and the degrees thereof, and volumes have been written on the varieties of mental disorders for centuries. We diagnose, treat, observe, maintain, and educate on mental disorders; but when it comes to referencing mental illness with the right to own a firearm, those who are legislating and asking for views from others must be careful. As far as we are able, we must be as a good judge should be: impartial, a good listener, not biased to one or another side or view or opinion, and patient enough to note the views of everyone who is participating in any organized debate on the issue.

The issues revolving (pardon the use of that word) around gun violence, gun control, law enforcement and FOIA cards and gun possession are complex, difficult, and hard to deal with. But deal with them we must as has been pointed out hundreds of times since the Sandy Hook massacre.

And now this week we hear of a bus driver in Alabama that was shot and killed by a man who then abducted a child from that bus. That idiot, that angry, that awful man terrorized others and refuses now to give up the child despite that he is sick and has called for his parents. I hope that the situation can be ended by non -violence but if it cannot then the assailant brought it down on himself; let us all hope the child will emerge safely from his prison and be happily reunited with his family.

Guns? Do we need them at all? Does anyone need them? To what degree do we need them around our homes and businesses?

Deep questions, and we must ask, ponder, think on and solve each one of them.

Well, if you are as I am, you have had quite enough of certain words, hints, expressions and concepts clouding our airwaves lately. What have you heard enough of, and how has hearing such things affected you or someone you know or love or care deeply about or work with?

In 2012 hearing the expression “fiscal cliff” was enough, but added to that in Illinois people had to deal with “pension crisis”, “gang turf”, “gang rape”, and “foreclosure”. Sure these are all terms that can interrelate as concerns politics, economic situations, neighborhoods and communities, but please folks, must we hear about them EVERY DAY?

Will talking about “gun violence” do anything until we actually sit down with a plan and ACT UPON what is needed?

And what about “behavioral problems”? Well now, everyone has some degree of a “behavioral problem”, and certainly this ties into “gun control” and the Second Amendment chatter going on. We would do well with the types and amounts of handguns all ready in the marketplace and at those gun shows and in private collections. We do not need assault weapons or high powered guns that do nothing but make havoc and crisis and tragedy and suffering. Continue to bug the daylights out of your elected officials until they act to ban such weapons from our nation for good.

Foreclosure and the banks and AIG and the insurance crisis… oh poor us under the gun of corporate thuggery and our own tendency to greed, pride, showing off, materialism, envy and coveting. Pity us who are in such a vulnerable state of behavioral crisis, and the corporations know that and see it and use their tactics to act on our vices, enhance them and make them seem acceptable, wonderful, marvelous and great. So we want a home larger than we can afford because we think it will make us “look good” or “get ahead” with someone? We think the same about our clothes and cars and jobs and the schools we put our kids in.

Status symbolism is materialism and the Seven Deadly Sins rolled up into one concept. So what if you have a box seat at the symphony or can get your name on the list of the highest donors to some hospital or park or music center? Is your home free of leaks, holes, broken windows and an overgrown lawn? Then what do you need so many bedrooms, bathrooms, and thousands more square feet for? To show that you can have an indoor basketball court or pool?

And what is a car meant to do? It is meant to get you from point A to point B, plain and simple. What do you need in a car- a DVD player, an IPOD hook up, a cell phone link or a miniature movie theater? What do you need to keep your kids entertained on a road trip, some little electronic device that makes noise and is easily broken? Didn’t have those things when I was a kid on road trips. I made do with visual and intellectual games, reading or eating or just resting and enjoying the scenery. I played games like finding out of state license plates or considering the types of architecture I saw on those road trips. I would think about the changing landscape or skies or weather conditions. If I became uninterested in the outside I turned to actual BOOKS and stimulated my brain that way. I did not need movies, my own phone or miniature television to stay entertained. I would read the newspaper and discuss currrent events with my travel companions.

What about upholding the Second Amendment? Hear ye, NRA, just because someone talks about eliminating assault -style weapons from our shelves and stores does not mean a total push to get rid of our Second Amendment rights and privileges – now that latter words is the most important here, PRIVILEGE. It is a privilege to own a weapon; we have the right to do that, to protect our homes and businesses with them, but we also must learn how to use them properly and take care of them so they function properly. No one needs a military -style weapon, unless they are in the military and are fighting in some situation where the potential of having to use dozens of rounds at a time might be necessary. You do not need one of those AR weapons or M weapons to go hunting or protect your home or property. Any gun will do the job, after all it only takes one right shot to do the work.

For the rest of the negatives, how about “the flu”, or “food stamps” (especially hearing that millions of American kids rely on them), or “the government”, or one of the worst but most widely accepted is “social media”.

Now, all media outlets are in a sense social. The “mass media” are meant to draw people together to interact on certain events and concepts, to get us to think about something in a herd instinct mentality or to talk about issues of national or global importance, or at least what some news producer think is important, valid, or worth our time to see or hear. The private electronics world of the I -devices is social and yet it is antisocial. Through the pods and pads and tablets and readers people can chat, text, go to the Web, research, share data, look at electronic books and articles, and do business networking. That is the social/ society/ group aspect of those forms of sharing and media. These forms of expression and media become antisocial by… well, just look around next time you are on a city bus, waiting at a train or bus station or airport. How many people are silent, some with blank or glazed expressions, sitting or standing near you and others, holding on to those little devices as though they were platinum bars or something so precious that it would be a disaster to lose them? There they are with those cords hanging from their ears, wound around arms and hands, and sticking out of pockets, perfect targets for criminals who will think nothing of shoving that inattentive music listener to the floor and making off with that phone, pad, pod, tablet or reader and leaving them in whatever state they happen to be.

What else is negative, well anything dealing with our United States Congress, that is for sure. Anything about the Speaker of the House, the Senate, the House, any of them, I can do without. Anything about Syria, Israel, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Egypt I can care less about at this time. We need to focus on getting our own country, the UNITED STATES, not only back together but actually UNITED, thank you. No more money for foreign nations, not one cent. No more military support for them either, not one person or cent or plane or bomb until these folks can learn to take care of themselves instead of having us babysit and protect and train them. These countries were around long before America was even a thought, so let them deal with what they will. Let us turn to taking care of our own; it is long past due that we do.

Christmas – we can look at this holiday in a couple of ways; the secular, materialistic way that has become so prevalent and it seems so relevant in today’s American society, or on the path of which Christmas is based by its very spelling. The word Christ is very powerful, the basis of the Christian religion and the head of all who follow those principles. We misuse the name of Christ many times without giving it much thought, and we misuse the meaning of the holiday (really, holy day) when we go off the mark of what it really means.To some the “holidays”, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, seem to herald the time of breaking out the sales circulars, the decorations, the ads at the grocery stores, department stores, big box stores, any kind of commercial exchange venue.

We want to imitate the first bearers of the gifts that were given to the baby Jesus (later that head of all Christians), the wise men/ magi/ kings who made an amazing journey to see that young child who would be king. But we go to excess in the way we struggle to find “the right thing”, or get just the right wrapping paper, or find the right card, or be seen at the right store at just the time of day when “all our friends” will be there and know we are showing off our status and our wish to pick over the shelves to get that item before anyone else does… even to the point of losing friends.Let us take a closer look at that special event in history, an event that is painted, talked about, re-enacted every year as it has been for centuries in Christmas stories all over the world. There is more to this story than meets the eye of the artist, the bard, or the poet. In this is something for everyone.

THE GIFTS OF THE MAGI

The journey of these three wise men, sage kings as recorded in the many works about them, began perhaps two years earlier. According to them, a star was seen in the east and they followed it in order to worship him whom it symbolized. In the Book of Matthew, in chapter 2, the details are brief but enough to give us knowledge that something special had happened and those men had set out to find out exactly what was going on. In the lore, the star meant that someone of importance, a governor, a king, had been born, and they were come to worship. They gathered their provisions and personnel and set out.

The paintings record this small group as a diverse gathering of rulers, with the time and wealth to make such a journey. Their lands must have been at peace in order for them to leave those lands and make their way to Jerusalem in order to recognize another king, and a baby at that, but then rulers in the Bible were very young times, and there is a fine painting of a maharajah, part of the exhibit at the Field Museum, when Raj Singh was only eleven. No matter who they were or what they looked like, theirs was a common mission and their goal was to find the new king. Through obstacles, harsh conditions, and maybe with some doubt in their minds, they made the journey and found the Child.

What they followed has been described many ways, as a comet, a conjunction, a supernova, and maybe even by some as a gamma ray burst (now that would really have been something to see the light of, as they are extremely energetic and that energy must travel billions of light years). For a light to last two years the event would have to be a very powerful burst of light indeed. Whatever it was, the kings followed it diligently until they came to the place over which the star paused and the light shone upon it. At that time, with reverence and dignity, the kings, surely tired from their travels, presented their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, no doubt in containers as precious as their contents.

Gold of course is well -known in its symbolism, for its purity, brilliance, endurance and many uses. It probably was the element used in the containers for all the gifts. Frankincense is a precious, fragrant gum resin from a tree known for its healing purposes and use in rituals. Myrrh is an oleoresin, an expensive spice, with uses in perfume, used also in preparation for burials in the times of Jesus. The benefits of all three of these gifts were well known, for medicinal and healing properties, to reduce swelling and inflammation and the like. Either these kings already knew of the benefits of these gifts or they were very well advised by their courtiers as to what might be suitable for gifts. They listened to the right people, and now their intelligence is rooted in history.

c. 1432-1436 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What they carried with them was wisdom. They prepared carefully for that long journey. Being kings they were surely greatly guarded and appointed as kings should be. They were true to the traditions of their ancestors and their sages, who studied deeply the ancient texts to ascertain this event. They prepared carefully for this event by gathering the facts, preparing provisions, making sure the quality of their gifts, making ready their travling parties, and their animals, and setting out. Being such a long journey they had to be careful in their way so that they would make it safely and carry out their mission.Now perhaps you could see a king dressed in the manner they are accustomed to when in their native lands, maybe in dark, rich, jeweled robes and turbans and golden headdresses, maybe in garments wrapped around and fastened with brooches and pins fine with jewels and metals, maybe a combination of these regalia. But these would not be practical for a long, dusty, difficult journey over hills, deserts, river passes and mountains. And not wanting to attract too much of the wrong attention, they probably dressed rather plainly, with nothing overly glittering or heavy to burden them or their beasts of burden.

Wearing a crown means something special. A crown is a symbol of great authority, worn only by a select few in positions of amazing and incredible power. Crowns are made so that the wearer stands out; the turban ornaments worn by the maharajahs of India were meant to do the same thing, sparkle and move and shimmer so that the wearer would be known for his authority and the right to mete out power, delegation, and dicates. In the ancient lore of some religious traditions, the crown chakra is where the higher powers of the intellect reside and from which these powers spring to light the world and all who know the bearers of these faculties, brilliant facets, and wondrous principles of learning and achievement.

One of these kings may well have been from the region of the world we now know as India, but the point is that three powerful men came together for this wondrous journey to find another king and give him adoration and royal presents, the best they had to offer. Paintings show them in deep and humble admiration of the newborn king as he is held or is in the manger in the presence of his parents, Mary and Joseph, as they open their gifts. The area must have been filled with sparkle and light, and with a fragrance almost overwhemling, as of an Old Testament temple during times of high worship on special occasions.

It is truly a great moment in world history, something everyone can appreciate for the qualities that go way beyond the event itself.

English: Adoration of the Wise Men by Murillo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)